Archive | Breakthrough Tip of the Week

A woman lies crushed under a frozen typewriter. All that can be seen of her in the original divining card* are pale legs and feet. She is a writer – and she could have been me. She could have been me, splayed under the alluring weight of my and another’s illusions. I contacted him after twelve […]

I am southeast of Tucumcari, New Mexico. There’s a sign for a cemetery, the town whose dead it contains is not anywhere in sight. I turn west onto a rutted dirt road, drive perhaps four miles, stop, park and climb out of the car. (I am in the blissful universe of a Road Trip, during […]

Space and time are not conditions in which we live, they are modes in which we think. —Albert Einstein You can be anywhere in this zone of sky and water and possibility. Forget what you think you know. Forget what you have read about “How to Write”. Forget what you have lost. Begin here: I am time… […]

You were eight years old. You knew everything you would ever need to create. Your mom and dad were both at work. The baby-sitter took you to an old diner. The lady at the front desk gave you paper and markers. The baby-sitter ordered two chocolate milkshakes. Decades later, you remember how paradise felt. You… […]

I once sat on a weatherbeaten wooden dock jutting out into a Northcountry pond. The water was so clean, we drank it. There were brown bass swimming below me and wild huckleberries on the shoreline. We would pick the berries. My mother would make pancakes from them. You will never find pancakes more delicious no […]

Find your way through. There is no map. The destination is unknown. All you can do is study what is directly in front of you. All you can do is make one small move. Then, study the next revealed terrain. Move. Study. Move. Weeks, months, years, a decade in the future, you know the whole […]

You’re not the only writer who has given up, is giving up or will give up on your writing. Sometimes, you tell yourself that your busy busy busy life is getting in the way; sometimes you find yourself in the middle of a book, a story, a poem and feel abruptly lost and trapped; sometimes […]

You are. Here. Snow falls on your hair, your face, on the blossoms you are photographing with your phone. It is May 1. May Day. Somewhere, celebrants circle a May Pole, twining ribbons into braid – pink, pale green, pure white. Somewhere the weather is as expected. Tell us a story about a wo/man/you, about […]

We are driven to believe that we know – know what is happening in our lives, what has happened, what will happen. We are driven by the frantic chaos that surrounds us – just go into your smartphone – and our delicate and miraculous neurons connect faster and faster. We miss what matters. We miss […]

Concrete. Thrift Store. Writing in the air. Denim. Rocks. Galaxies. (Thanks to Lin Saunders for the piece below. She wrote it in our Wednesday evening writing circle. I’d given a prompt – can’t remember what it was – but these words are all hers.) And, for additional visual, this picture. You know what to do […]